The adult obstructive sleep apnea/hypopnea syndrome is a sleep-disordered breathing disease with snoring and apnea as clinical characteristics which are caused by the collapse-caused obstruction of the upper airway during sleep. The main harm of OSA is the frequent occurrence of sleep apnea and hypopnea, which leads to the long-term decrease of blood oxygen saturation during sleep, thus causing a series of pathological changes of the human body, so the OSA has become a source disease of a variety of systemic diseases (diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular accident, etc.). According to statistics, the prevalence of OSA is up to 2% to 4% of the population at present, the incidence of OSA among middle-aged people is extremely high, and health and life quality are severely affected. Therefore, the international health organization has classified OSA as a major disease harming the health and life quality of the human being.
As for the pathogenesis of OSA, it's generally believed that the main cause is the collapse-caused obstruction of soft tissues due to the relaxation of the pharyngeal muscles maintaining the patency of the upper airway during sleep, and the obstructed plane includes the nasal part, the palatopharyngeal part and the glossopharyngeal part. Methods for treating OSA are carried out around relieving or exploiting these obstructed parts.
For the obstruction of the nasal part, a good surgical treatment effect can be achieved by nasal endoscopic surgery.
For the obstruction of the palatopharyngeal part caused by soft palate retropulsion, palatopharyngoplasty can be adopted. Uvulopalatopharyngoplasty has made a great contribution to the improvement of OSA patients' symptoms and after recover. Although surgical treatment means benefit innumerable patients, from the aspect of long-term effects, the excessive resection of mucous membrane and soft palate tissue structures will injure functional muscles, causing complications, such as nasal regurgitation during deglutition, open rhinolalia and nasopharyngeal stenosis and atresia.
For the obstruction of the glossopharyngeal part caused by tongue retropulsion, surgical methods, such as tongue volume reduction surgery, tongue advancement surgery, electrical tongue muscle stimulation surgery and tongue root traction, can be adopted for treatment. These surgical methods have respective advantages and disadvantages, and have certain treatment effects in relieving the obstruction of the glossopharyngeal part caused by tongue retropulsion.
In the pathogenesis of OSA, besides obstruction caused by soft palate retropulsion or tongue root retropulsion, negative pressure produced by inspiration during breathing can cause the collapse of the lateral pharyngeal wall, forming obstruction. Such obstruction caused by the collapse of the lateral pharyngeal wall has drawn more and more attention. Existing treatment methods are various lateral pharyngeal wall plasties, which mainly outwardly draw the muscles of the lateral pharyngeal wall, such as the M. palatopharyngeus, by surgical methods to achieve the purpose of enlarging the transverse diameter of the pharyngeal cavity to prevent airway obstruction. However, in the prior art, effective implantable medical instruments which can treat OSA caused by the collapse-caused obstruction of the lateral pharyngeal wall do not exist yet. Therefore, a novel implantable instrument needs to be provided to treat OSA caused by the collapse-caused obstruction of the lateral pharyngeal wall.